Yesterday Trevor made me breakfast and found my ink (green).  He offered to put away the Christmas ornaments that he didn’t want put up in the first place if I just stacked them in one place.

He drove me to the airport (which according to Harry in “when Harry met Sally” only happens at the beginning of a relationship.  Not nearly 13 years later.)

He was laughing at my franticness and general tiredness and shitshow personality.  He told me “pull it together, Dobner” with a smile.  I told him sometimes you have to fall down before you can get back up again.  When you shuffle a pack of cards badly, you can end up with some up and some down.  You need to start again.  Carefully turning them all the right way round before you shuffle them correctly.  I have become unshuffled and unhinged.  I need to grab the reins.  Become unruffled and unsung.  I don’t need to blow my own trumpet.  I will bring my saxophone back from England with me.  I need sleep.

I thought I would sleep on the plane, but life had other plans for me.  My insomnia is full on Fight Club scale now.  Soon I am going to be talking to myself about “single serving friends” and hoping Brad Pitt will tell me I am clever.

Yesterday, I accidentally copied someone’s writing style.   I didn’t mean to.  Staccato.  Their writing confounds me and impresses me.  They write with anger and an aching beauty.  They have the soul of a poet.  And so does my husband.  They both have a temper.  So do I.  I’m  allowing more people into my life.  Many of them writers – but I don’t know that until they start to offer me words.  They LOVE words.  I immediately fall in love with all of them.  Paul writes with the intensity of William Gibson, Brian writes like Gandalf, Wendy writes like a witchy woman.  Hugh writes with other people’s cast-off fucked-up words that make me laugh.  Chris writes like a pianist, a DJ, and god-knows what and who else I will add to my life.

What am I?

I love words.  Words are easy and they are our friends.  Yes, words can hurt, but they can’t kill.  And used correctly, they can wrap their arms around you and keep you safe and warm, like a baby bird.  Maybe like a tiny Raven? (the capital R is not an accident.)  Like a baby.  Like a baby in a womb.  My womb.

I need to find my own voice.  Maybe that should be my resolution for next year.   Just be me.